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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27590645">Territories</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaCathcart/pseuds/AdelaCathcart'>AdelaCathcart</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Brinksmanship, F/M, Jealousy, Naked Male Clothed Female, misery fic for the plague year</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:27:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,016</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27590645</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaCathcart/pseuds/AdelaCathcart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"A witch.” Before he finished the word she was licking his parted lips, chasing the other woman’s scent down his throat. He tasted the tense irritation in her mouth, her cruel teeth parting for him helplessly as he’d known they would, even as her tongue twitched with the urge to excoriate him. “Have you any idea the magnificent things witches are capable of?”</p><p>She folded her hands around his jaw, very gently: she was only so gentle when she wanted something. Her smile was like a slim blade poised to dissect him. With the familiar sensation of falling he bared his throat. “A little,” she said sweetly as she laid him down. “Tell me.”</p><p>[Asriel, somewhat unwisely, boasts to Marisa of his witch lover.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lord Asriel/Ruta Skadi (referenced)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Territories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>“I perceive your lovers purely as the successors of Alexander the Great, incompetent joint rulers of an empire where I once ruled supreme.” —<i>Les Liaisons dangereuses</i>, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos</p><p>"I know he had a witch lover. He boasted of it to me."—<i>His Dark Materials</i> season two, episode one, "The City of Magpies"</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Though she no longer needed to, she came to him in secret, when his household was asleep, and they made love furtively, because it still felt like a crime. Once he might have given all his fortune to keep her safely through the night in his arms, but even now with his fortune gone she would hurry from his bed with her thighs still wet, as if she had a husband with a gun and an eye on the clock, instead of one securely underground.</p><p class="p1">He’d drifted off but the movement woke him; before opening his eyes he smelled her perfume in his pillow and reached for her. It was her cashmere skirt he touched instead: she was seated beside him, already fastening her stockings. Stelmaria was watching her, wary and semiconscious.</p><p class="p1">“Come back to bed,” he groaned.</p><p class="p1">“I can’t stay tonight.”</p><p class="p1">She refused to look at him, but her monkey dæmon, on the floor by her feet, was glaring as he helped her on with her shoes. Asriel rubbed his eyes, and reluctantly sat up and stretched.</p><p class="p1">“Always running. A lie, to save your pride.”</p><p class="p1">“Does it matter? I thought we didn’t believe in ownership.”</p><p class="p1">“Ownership has nothing to do with it,” he shrugged, lifting the hair off her shoulder to caress her neck, avoiding her eyes. “I don’t need to own you to know what I am to you.”</p><p class="p1">“And what’s that?” She caught his hand at the wrist and he smiled.</p><p class="p1">“You’ve never been happy a day without me.”</p><p class="p1">“Your grandiosity is really a wonder,” Marisa said, forcing a laugh. It hurt her throat. “We’ve never made each other any promises. Don’t treat this like something it’s not.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t. I have no expectations of you whatsoever. I’ll forget you as soon as you leave here. It’s not as if I don’t have other lovers.”</p><p class="p1">That got her attention. She hid it well to begin with, but he could see the twitch in her lip as she fought back a sneer. He cupped her neck, stroking her nape with his thumb: a possessive gesture, he realized too late. She leaned her cheek into his open hand.</p><p class="p1">“Hm,” she said flatly. “Anyone I know?”</p><p class="p1">“I doubt it.”</p><p class="p1">“How convenient.”</p><p class="p1">“Marisa, we both know Brytain’s your territory. If I’d had any woman in London you’d try to have her strangled in her bed.”</p><p class="p1">“Is there no limit at all to your self-regard? I’m sure I don’t care a bit how you amuse yourself,” she said, but she had left off dressing, and sat frowning thoughtfully with her hands in her lap. He moved to kiss her. She turned aside, blocking him with her palm. “On the continent, then?” she demanded. “Or the colonies?”</p><p class="p1">“Neither,” he said, near enough now for her to feel his breath on her face as he spoke. “A witch.” Before he finished the word she was licking his parted lips, chasing the other woman’s scent down his throat. He tasted the tense irritation in her mouth, her cruel teeth parting for him helplessly as he’d known they would, even as her tongue twitched with the urge to excoriate him. Ownership or no, he could have drawn her map from memory, he thought. “Have you any idea the magnificent things witches are capable of?”</p><p class="p1">She folded her hands around his jaw, very gently: she was only so gentle when she wanted something. Her smile was like a slim blade poised to dissect him. With the familiar sensation of falling he bared his throat. “A little,” she said sweetly as she laid him down. “Tell me.”</p><p class="p1">“She’s five hundred years old, all that knowledge and experience, though physically she’s younger even than you. She has no concept of obscenity—she’s absolutely free of all our self-imposed moral perversions. When she makes love she thinks of nothing but the act, no shame or preoccupation, only the moment and the sensations of the body. She’s incredibly strong. And she never tires.</p><p class="p1">“She’s able to help me with my work—she can fly directly into the Aurora as easily as thinking, or send her dæmon while she stays behind with me. And she can see and hear things in it beyond every scrap of our crude technology combined. But I’m learning. She’s teaching me to see it.</p><p class="p1">“And she’s a queen. She wants me for her consort. Men don’t live among witches, of course, and to them our lives are brief, but she would have me for as long as I last, in whatever ways she can. A partnership. Loyalty. Perhaps children.”</p><p class="p1">“Ah,” Marisa said indifferently, and he faltered. While he’d spoken she had been kissing his ears, his neck, tracing with her tongue the hot channels just beneath the skin that led to his heart. As long as he kept talking he had her focus, but he had run out of words and the desire to hurt her was ebbing as pleasure mounted. She nuzzled his left breast, and he thought he could feel hot tears on her face, but then she bit him, exerting every ounce of force those delicate jaws could muster. He managed to hold back the yelp of pain, but only just.<br/>
<br/>
“<em>Bitch</em>,” he hissed.</p><p class="p1">That made her laugh, so she had to let him go, and as she lifted her head she yanked out one or two of his hairs which had caught in her teeth. She licked her lips, gazing fondly at the mark she’d made.</p><p class="p1">“If she learns you’ve been unfaithful to her, who do you think she’ll kill? You or me?”</p><p class="p1">He fought the urge to rub the aching spot. “I wonder which you’d prefer.”</p><p class="p1">“Didn’t she give you a sprig of her cloud-pine? Why not summon her and find out?” Asriel didn’t think he’d winced but she caught something in his expression nonetheless. Her hand slid up his thigh. She cupped his erection tenderly through the sheet.</p><p class="p1">“For your sake I do hope she’ll come. Goodnight, Asriel. I’m done with you.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re not,” he called after her, but she had slammed the door on the words.</p>
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